Shootinghttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2015/05/shooting_laughter.html
This is a picture I did not take of a breaking news story, replete with camera trucks & satellite dishes mushrooming into the sky, reporters in suits doing camera-checks ready-to-go Live at 5, while just past & down the block I sit in my car, hemmed-in by others leaving work & driving home, all sitting in cars, when a series of shots ring out, probably fifteen to twenty -- and by "shots ring out" I mean a sound that was close enough that the hair on your arms stood up, but far enough away you knew you'd be okay, unless this was a mass shooter who started running & spraying in all directions, and even though you're hemmed-in, you can't help but gape when the missed picture comes into view: a gaggle of women, all office workers, all hurrying together carrying purses and pocketbooks and bags, folders, boxes of documents, all of them running, none of them in running shoes, some of them yelping more than screaming as they ran away from the gunfire, and as I watched, I waited for the slightest smile, searching their faces for a glimmer revealing a practical joke gone wrong -- while behind them, around the corner, less than a hundred yards away, two policemen had shot and killed a woman in their custody, a woman who apparently slipped her cuffs, somehow got a hold of a gun in the backseat of a cop car and began shooting, starting this whole scene in motion: office women fleeing, the reporters down the block with their ears to the wind, my windshield the only thing between me and the scared faces of the office workers as I watched, waiting and hoping for a laugh that never came.2015-05-12T11:59:59-05:00Sky Columnhttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2015/01/sky_column.html
This is a picture I did not take of the sky on a cold and clear afternoon, air suddenly filled with two competing sounds; the low rush of a helicopter scrambling to catch-up with some traffic disaster, and the high, faraway clucking of Sandhill Cranes migrating in the wrong direction at the wrong time of year, each sound pulling me to look up, look up and see four distinct aerial arrangements converging into a pipe of perspective; above me on up: a hawk, forty feet off the ground and swooping right-to-left, and above the hawk the copter, flying left-to-right, each colliding (not in altitude, but in stacked arrangement) and above the helicopter, Cranes in the kind-of misshapen checkmark you'd make if your pencil split, mid-break, and further, as my eyes adjusted, the speck of one single jet decelerating inside its flight-plan to the world's busiest airport, mere miles from this sky's column where all aligned at once as if purposed.2015-01-27T11:59:59-05:00Pawn Shop Highway Medianhttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2015/01/pawn_shop_median.html
This is a picture I did not take of a chain of events where I found myself holding the chain's end, or some strange set of links grafted to the original chain, where the slack gets taken-up and whips about in unpredictable ways, as unpredictable as where it began: a Thursday in July on Bay Street in Staten Island, where Eric Garner told police officers he was tired of it, that "it stops today" & then found himself taken by a chokehold launched from Officer Pantaleo, and while that chokehold had its own logic about what exactly would stop that day, no one on Bay Street knew how Garner's death (when coupled with the year's events in Ferguson, Cleveland, Dayton and elsewhere) would build into protests and marches all across the country, and how Americans would see the failures of two grand juries as sparks to kindle a spirited, new civil rights movement which would inspire many to stand-up & take to the streets and shout or even fall to their feet and die-in for the kinds of things Americans make noise about when so much has gone gradually and suddenly wrong; and devastatingly, one of those inspired would travel to New York a month after the failure to indict Pantaleo, carrying a semi-automatic Taurus pistol last sold legally at a pawn shop I occasionally drive by on my way to my mother-in-law's house, and today, Christmas Day, 2014, driving past its glaring yellow windows advertising GOLD & GUNS and FAST CASH, I saw a man standing with his hands in the air, standing in the median of the road on Christmas Day, in front of the store that last legally sold the gun used to murder two NYPD officers in Brooklyn a month after a grand jury failed to indict Eric Garner's killer; this man standing in the median across from the pawn shop with his hands in the air, flagging down a police car driving in front of me, in my lane, the man waving his hands in the air as if to say this whole thing is crazy, this day is crazy, this year -- people do crazy things in this world like walk down highways on Christmas with their hands in the air, and as he waved down the cop I was focused on the cop's brake lights so I could prepare to slow-down and I kept watching his brake lights, rolling right behind him and we passed the pawn shop and the man turned with us, and as he turned he lowered his arms and brought his wrists together as if to show the cop all he wanted for Christmas was to wear hand-cuffs and neither the cop nor I ever touched our brakes.2015-01-01T12:13:13-05:00Gunless Gun Rackhttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2014/05/gunless_gun_rack.shtml
This is a picture I did not take in twilight's gathering dark of a man stepping from his pick-up truck into a Wal-Mart parking lot in the South in the middle of an explosive era of American mayhem and murder, from Aurora to Newtown to Boston, the man's gun rack proudly mounted across the back-window of his truck's extended cab, his truck's gun rack gun-less but not empty -- in the top-slot, rolled-up and resting, a red-and-white umbrella; in the bottom-slot, one blue.
2014-05-29T14:27:54-05:00Lampshade Crosswalkhttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2013/03/lampshade_cross.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of a solitary lampshade tipped-over on the sidewalk of a street corner at dusk, blown like a tumbleweed and rolling off the curb, crossing the street directly in the crosswalk, at the exact time when the pedestrian walk signal was lit, a nonchalant lampshade crossing the street in front of a white pick-up truck patiently waiting to turn, the red bulb of its right turn-signal flashing.2013-03-13T08:55:18-05:00MLK T-Shirthttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2012/06/mlk_tshirt.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of a man in Atlanta wearing a yellow Martin Luther King "I Have a Dream" t-shirt while selling drugs beneath the freeway, half a mile down the street from the house where Dr. King was born.2012-06-03T20:27:34-05:00School Bus Daddyhttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2012/05/school-bus-daddy.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of a young woman standing at a bus stop beside a baby carriage, cradling the infant in her arms, waving its tiny forearm while saying, "wave to daddy!" as a young man leans out a window of a yellow school bus to wave back at his new daughter and her mom while on his way to another day in high school.2012-05-29T20:06:25-05:00MR. ERFECThttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2012/05/mr_erfect.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of a bedazzled maroon Ford Taurus with raised gold letters on the lid of the trunk spelling "MR. PERFECT"; one night on my way home I noticed the "P" had fallen-off (making Mr. Perfect less-than-perfect) and the next morning, as soon as the sun was up, I went to photograph Mr. Erfect's trunk, only to find the P had been promptly recovered and replaced.2012-05-21T13:21:13-05:00Scene of the Hate Crimehttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2012/02/scene-of-the-hate-crime.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of a satellite news truck, two police cars and a van from the Corrections Department idling at noon in Atlanta in front of JVC Grocery and Deli, where on February 4th, Brandon White was assaulted (the fracas videoed by a gang member and uploaded to the Web) and today, under the careful watch of police, prisoners in yellow vests picked-up trash from the vacant lot across the street while the TV crew's generator hummed, because when the media machine arrives to broadcast the story about how a neighborhood gang assaulted a young man because he's gay, you better have a clean vacant lot in the background.2012-02-08T11:25:46-05:00Tornado Warning Hearse Trooper Chasehttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2012/01/tornado_warning.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of a black hearse with tinted windows traveling at speed down a country road toward an oncoming storm as the morning sky darkened in advance of a tornado watch, and as the hearse sped through incoming rain toward the storm and the edge of Alabama, it was chased by an intrepid State trooper, lights blazing through the now downpour, police siren wailing as the wind of their chase passing twirled piles of wet leaves at the roadside into small spirals, eddies of their own.2012-01-23T15:29:19-05:00Cheek to Frozen Veggie-Burger 4-Packhttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2011/12/cheek_to_frozen.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of a sleeping newborn wearing a blue winter hat and jumper, resting in a car seat nestled inside a shopping cart, which the baby's mother had filled with a rising crest of groceries so high it threatened to broach the sides of the car seat and fully engulf the baby, so much so, the newborn's feet had become partially buried by dueling boxes of Frosted Mini-Wheats, and while the baby slept and mom hung a left-turn out of Frozen Food heading for Milk & Dairy, a 4-pack of MorningStar Farms Griller's Vegan frozen veggie-burgers tipped from a stack alongside the car seat and gently slid into the right side of the baby's face, pink sleeping cheek to frozen veggie-burger 4-pack.2011-12-12T15:11:22-05:00McCurryhttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2011/12/mccurry.shtml
This is a picture I did not take McCurry.]]>2011-12-07T21:29:57-05:00Ask Mehttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2011/07/ask_me.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of a man with a walking cane and cigar ambling toward me on the street, his t-shirt a faded yellow, bearing a worn message in 80s-style lettering saying "Ask Me About Century 21", and as he walked toward me, looking me in the eye, he passed a woman sitting on a bench right next to the sidewalk; her grey t-shirt said, "Ask Me If I Care..."2011-07-25T11:46:43-05:00Firehouse Firehttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2011/06/firehouse_fire.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of white smoke billowing from a firehouse, the garage doors flung-open, firemen standing in the smoky garage with their hands on their hips, looking at each other as if stunned by the fact that they're firemen standing in a firehouse filling with smoke while one of them reaches for the door handle of the fire engine, as if now's best idea would include driving the fire truck outside the garage to the sidewalk's hydrant where they could aim the truck's hose back at the firehouse; but that would be a different picture I didn't take, this one stayed stuck in the gauzy moment when the fireman reached for the truck's door while smoke exhaled out of the garage into the neighborhood, wrapping around the American flag on the firehouse lawn as a man in jean shorts walked by on the sidewalk carrying a bag of take-out BBQ, holding his nose as the smoke slowly engulfed him.2011-06-14T08:03:39-05:00A Woman in Springtime Behind a Pancake Househttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2011/05/a-woman-in-springtime-behind-a-pancake-house.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of a woman in springtime behind a pancake house, sitting on the tailgate of a pick-up truck, her shoes off, toenails bright pink, swinging her heels while reading a book, her skirt a modest and smooth grey, her office clothes belying a lunch break in May spent reading in afternoon sunshine, in the na&#239;ve kind of sunshine that exists before rain, when a slow wind is the only giveaway that everything changes, as it curls from the West to cross the parking lot and gently push across her page. 2011-05-03T19:27:35-05:00Barbershop's Window Sill Signhttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2011/04/obama_barbershop_sign.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of a barber reaching through the horizontal window blinds of his shop in Atlanta, a few miles from the barbershop Walker Evans photographed in 1936 but similarly well-loved and worn, the barber's hand reaching through the blinds to remove a sun-faded window sign supporting Senator Obama, who was still a Senator in 2008 when the sign was printed and proudly posted in the shop's window, and Obama's campaign staff had been prescient enough to include specific outreach to barbershops in Atlanta, knowing the significance of these institutions within the African-American community, and back then, in 2008, I'd accompanied optimistic, bright-eyed campaign volunteers to barbershops in the city to photograph the distribution of posters and literature supporting Obama -- and here we are again, three years later, a sun-faded and curled sign being removed from the sill by the barber's slim fingers as I look on, not photographing.2011-04-04T12:25:26-05:00Sunday Morning Sun Shieldhttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2011/02/sunday-morning-sun-shield.shtml
This is a picture I did not take of a woman waiting for a bus on a freezing morning in February, sun so bright in her face she shielded her eyes with a well-worn, black leather-bound Holy Bible.2011-02-13T06:47:04-05:00Man in an Airport Bistro Reaching for Fried Foodhttp://www.unphotographable.com/archives/2011/01/4_hour_body.shtml
This is a picture I did not take The 4-Hour Body.]]>2011-01-09T11:06:25-05:00